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The Demoralization is just Beginning

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Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#221

Post by mullingitover »

kawaiikouhai wrote: post #128
lxgr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My suspicion is that for a lot of people that grew up in and only know the US, there's a sense of impending doom if "American hegemony" ever were to be replaced by something else. But since there's no real practical experience of how that would actually feel (or rather, how a very high quality of life and subjective happiness are possible without an US salary in many other countries), they instead project from someth…

Exactly. I had this exact thought experiment of "What if America were no longer Hegemon". So, I looked at other historic examples. The British, Dutch, and Spanish. (You can add German/Austrian and the French, close contenders). They're all still very well-off!

If Britain were a US state it would be between Mississippi and Alabama in GDP per capita.

Not sure I’d call the place well off. Granted, a lot of the reason they’re in this situation is because they put everything into stopping the Nazis and thus saving the world. The US kinda lucked into inheriting the UK’s wealth.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#222

Post by OriginalMrPink »

ryandamm wrote: post #11

I prefer my economic takes from economists, or people who actually study these things. -there is more to an economy than manufacturing. Using manufacturing metrics to rate an economy is like scoring a soccer game based on how far your players run: in some contexts correlated with “winning” but in others it’s not. -gold is not a good currency or basis for monetary policy. -these ideas only sound self consistent withou…

Yes, please. But you know, these days, everyone is doing their own research, and think they nailed it. But it's often sloppy research, unfunded arguments, etc.

Just looking at the map in this article, and whatever source this comes from (some people don't seem to bother sharing sources) - it seems not accurate. (e.g. why is Greenland a different color than Denmark...)

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#223

Post by tokioyoyo »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #194

This feels too all over the place and contains a lot of assertions without evidence. I say this as a person who is very bearish about America. > The sun never set on the British empire. Now they put you in jail for memes. I’m pretty sure they put people in jail for the equivalent of memes during the imperial days, no? The king couldn’t put you away for speaking against him?

Author has decent points, but then again falls into “europoor” trap. He keeps saying how things are bad in Europe because X, Y, Z, but China also does X, Y, Z and for some reason he doesn’t comment on that. And as usual, no comments on quality of life for an average citizen.

Some people really need to go out, sit at random bars, and talk to people. They would get a better pulse check on society than 24/7 Twitter shitposting.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#224

Post by rat87 »

janalsncm wrote: post #31
ryandamm wrote: post #11

I prefer my economic takes from economists, or people who actually study these things. -there is more to an economy than manufacturing. Using manufacturing metrics to rate an economy is like scoring a soccer game based on how far your players run: in some contexts correlated with “winning” but in others it’s not. -gold is not a good currency or basis for monetary policy. -these ideas only sound self consistent withou…

> like scoring a soccer game based on how far your players run That’s a pretty good analogy for what GDP is counting, actually. But I think the larger point is that manufacturing is grounded in something real. It’s a measure of how many tanks and fighter jets you can make, no matter how much they cost to make.

Intangible products are very real

Manufacturing plastic one use sponge bob toys are also real. Real and not particularly useful and perhaps not what most people imagine when they vastly overstate the importance of manufacturing to an economy.

Now jets and planes and military supplies is a real issue. But Manufacturing in general isn't how many tanks and fighter jets you can make at best it correlated.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#225

Post by rat87 »

consp wrote: post #192
matwood wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Brain-draining the world is really the key to cementing American Hegemony in a post-Cold War world. One of the keys. Others are the USD as the defacto world reserve currency, the ability to project military might anywhere, and the US's ability to keep other countries from growing their militaries too much (making the other items in this list easier to manage). The US is quickly throwing all this away though.

Not the any% speedrun I think I was going to see but definitely the top runner right now. While the USD is still the de facto reserve currency for some, many larger countries and blocks have made sure they are not reliant on it. Up to the point where weakening or strengthening the value of the dollar is far less than a power it used to be.

They are reliant on it. The US is still the currency used for trade. The world economy is tied to the dollar and outside of countries we've sanctioned no country has made large steps towards using something else because using something else would be more complicated and would cost them money

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#226

Post by svara »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #176
rayiner wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Brain-draining the world is really the key to cementing American Hegemony in a post-Cold War world. Why should we want that instead of an orderly, well-governed democracy? Do you think people in Sweden or Denmark are upset their countries aren't hegemons? And what would that do to the country? Do you really think that, say, the top 5% of India and China (100 million people) would do better maintaining a democracy t…

> Do you think people in Sweden or Denmark are upset their countries aren't hegemons? Funny that you chose those two countries. Denmark is a founding member of NATO. Sweden is one of the two most recent admitted, almost a year ago. My point is that it's U.S. hegemony that has protected its own democracy and that of liberal democratic Europe to a large extent. Sweden and Denmark haven't been hegemons because they have…

> Sweden and Denmark haven't been hegemons because they haven't needed to be.

That's exactly right, and I used nearly exactly those words in a recent comment.

Important to note: The free world - economically advanced democracies excluding the US - is the largest economy in the world, larger than the US by about 30%, with an even larger population.

These countries have a historically unprecedented incentive to work much more closely together now, and there is a massive void to fill.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#227

Post by rat87 »

rayiner wrote: post #184
deserts wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The book you cite and more generally the arguments traced in the Deep Roots literature are not very strong and often deployed to support anti-immigrant, anti-assimiliationist views. I'm not persuaded we could recreate America even if we took any 1000 people, even people who can trace their apple pie eating back to the Mayflower, because you know, America is a country and more generally complex arrangement of stuff th…

> often deployed to support anti-immigrant, anti-assimiliationist views. So what? Immigration is optional. The people supporting large-scale migration from countries without functional democracies should have the burden of proving that cultural attitudes salient to democracy are not durable. Even in the U.S., I'm not persuaded that the Anglo-American republic as originally conceived survived the mass immigration of c…

Immigration is core to American identity and America's success.

It's one of our core defining values

The American that was originally convinced was imperfect and much worse then the America we have today. We literally had slavery and most adults couldn't vote.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#228

Post by jajko »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #179
kawaiikouhai wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I had this exact thought experiment of "What if America were no longer Hegemon". So, I looked at other historic examples. The British, Dutch, and Spanish. (You can add German/Austrian and the French, close contenders). They're all still very well-off!

What you're missing is the role the U.S. has historically played in preserving and protecting democracy in the world and, particularly, Europe. If America was suddenly no longer a hegemon, it would be qualitatively different. There are other hegemons in the world that would step into the void left by the U.S., and it would be their influence that would be felt most the world over, including by the countries you named…

At this point, and from this point onward, some other hegemons sound darn good compared to US. russia aint one, they simply lack competence for anything grander than petty squables at their borders. Everybody hates them, inclusing all former soviet bloc countries and only deal with them when they have to.

Ie China is not doing sudden backstabbing of its allies, strongarming weak at their weakest point. In contrary ie it helped develop parts of Africa that were severely neglected by western powers, not for free but that was never the case. They did some not so nice stuff, but so did US in the past, in much higher numbers. Tens of millions of civilians are dead because of failed US policies and invasions which ended in withdrawals and defeats in past 80 years.

With all negative stuff on China (uighur treatment, other cases of human rights violations) its still shines compared to US now. Now for any outsider (>95% of mankind), why should they still ally with US now?

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#229

Post by tokioyoyo »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #220
tokioyoyo wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you lived in Denmark, Japan, China, Netherlands and some other countries in the past 10-15 years? I really don’t think you weigh in people’s personal preferences and general quality of life into your equations. There is a very big reason why there’s no more large swaths of immigrants from European and some Asian countries flocking into the US. Yes there is some, but the times when it was objectively much better…

> The majority of American households in the poorest US states are doing better than the majority of Europeans. I'm so tired of this trope on HN. It comes up over and over again, but never considers non-economic quality of life issues. Take for example public schools: They are awful in poor US states, and good-to-excellent in most highly developed European nations.

I swear, none of these people have been to Louisiana, West Virginia, or any of the empty-looking cities that used to be lively 50 years ago. And I’m saying this as a person who isn’t American, but wanted to check it out myself before I made assumptions about the world.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#230

Post by raxxorraxor »

ryandamm wrote: post #11

I prefer my economic takes from economists, or people who actually study these things. -there is more to an economy than manufacturing. Using manufacturing metrics to rate an economy is like scoring a soccer game based on how far your players run: in some contexts correlated with “winning” but in others it’s not. -gold is not a good currency or basis for monetary policy. -these ideas only sound self consistent withou…

I don't think economists overall, even when generalizing, have a good track record. Too often hidden interests modify the core of their messages. Krugman for example has a poor record on predictions, not sure about the other ones.

That said, this isn't all "gold" either in my opinion. Money is still tied to productivity. At least it works as long as people believe debts can be repaid. If they wouldn't, there would be runaway inflation.

It is more sensible to back that debt with productivity or "economic potential" instead of gold, but the idea isn't that far off as people generally say it is. In general it still is more loosely tied to real productivity though and that is a problem. The solution isn't to return to gold backing though.

And there is a development of poor economic ideas, like that creating debt is always good on a national economic level. You should never neglect to mention that this new debt would require something like a hegemonic military position to underline the "securities" of said debt.

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